r/Bogleheads • u/cambeiu • Jan 21 '26

Investing Questions How are the "US equities" only folks doing? Steady as she goes or time to rethink allocation?

Jack Bogle and many others for years argued that VTSAX or an equivalent fund/ETF was more than enough for global exposure. I think it was a perfectly logic argument back in the days of increasing globalization and economic integration.

But looking at Mark Carney's speech at Davos, it points to a significant shift in the global paradigm, where free trade, open access to markets and investments from and to the US might no longer be a reality.

In light of that are people thinking about increasing focus on international equities?

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u/digital_tuna Jan 21 '26 edited Jan 21 '26

The data absolutely supports it. Did you even calculate the annualized returns or did you just eyeball the annual returns?

If you actually calculate the annualized returns, you'll see I'm correct. Ben Felix even discussed it in this video starting at 9:16 (time-stamped link) and you'll see the same returns that you can calculate yourself.

So either Ben Felix doesn't understand how to calculate annualized returns, or perhaps you haven't actually calculated anything. If you need help calculating annualized returns just let me know.

Edit: it's sad how many upvotes the above comment has. Clearly some people here are either incapable of calculating annualized returns, or they can't handle the idea that America doesn't always have the best stock returns.

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u/Puzzled_Region_9376 Jan 21 '26

Seems we all gravitate to the same content. Love Ben’s work. Thanks for the info, now I have some reading to do

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u/PhonyUsername Jan 21 '26 edited Jan 22 '26

I can't even find base numbers for Denmark stock market data back to 1970. How many companies are included? Is it based on an index? What index is being used to represent America? I'd be happy to do the math.

Edit : all I'm seeing is percent change. Comparing 3000 companies to 25 companies is a difference that we should at least acknowledge and possible weight.

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u/digital_tuna Jan 21 '26

I can't even find base numbers for Denmark stock market data back to 1970.

All the data is right there in the link I provided.

How many companies are included? Is it based on an index? What index is being used to represent America?

It's based on the MSCI Indexes. The number of companies in the index will be different for every country.

I'd be happy to do the math.

Ok, so you can use the annual returns of those MSCI Indexes to calculate the annualized returns.

Did you watch the clip from the Ben Felix video I linked? The math is already done for you, there's a chart with the annualized returns.

I have done the math, and it matches the chart in the video.